New Year’s Day Birding ~ 2011

Mark Burns and I led our 15th annual New Year's Day birding trip for the Brookline Bird Club (BBC!) At 9:00AM, 30 BBCers met us at the municipal parking lot in Newburyport where we toasted in the New Year with sparkling apple cider and greeted each other! The weather could not have been more perfect for a New Year's Day birding trip – it was 43df as we started our day and the mercury slowly rose to 55df throughout the day! We had abundant sunshine and the wind was very light. We birded until 4:00PM.

We birded Salisbury Beach State Reservation and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge during the morning and then drove to Cape Ann for some afternoon birding.

We tallied 56 species for the Club list. Following is a complete list of the birds we saw:

Canada Goose – 750

Mute Swan – 3

Gadwall - 24

American Black Duck – 350

Mallard – 85

King Eider - 1

Common Eider – 280

Harlequin Duck – 8

Surf Scoter – 12

White-winged Scoter – 120

Black Scoter – 17

Bufflehead - 95

Common Goldeneye - 13

Red-breasted Merganser – 40

Ruddy Duck – 1

Red-throated Loon – 70

Common Loon – 35

Horned Grebe - 50

Red-necked Grebe – 30

Great Cormorant – 10

Bald Eagle -1

Northern Harrier – 4
Cooper's Hawk - 1

Red-tailed Hawk - 13

American Kestrel – 1

Peregrine Falcon – 2

Ruddy Turnstone – 2

Sanderling - 45

Purple Sandpiper – 18

Dunlin – 2

Bonapart’s Gull - 9

Ring-billed Gull – 100

Herring Gull - 200

Glaucous Gull - 2

Great Black-backed Gull – 45

Thick-billed Murre – 1

Razorbill – 101

Black Guillemot – 9

Rock Pigeon - 150

Mourning Dove – 75

Eastern Screech Owl - 1

Downy Woodpecker – 2

Blue Jay – 60

American Crow - 55

Black-capped Chickadee – 24

White-breasted Nuthatch - 5

American Robin – 24

Northern Mockingbird – 5
Brown Thrasher - 1

European Starling – 1,000

American Tree Sparrow – 12

Savannah Sparrow – 1

Song Sparrow – 2

Dark-eyed Junco - 3
Northern Cardinal - 2

House Sparrow - 100

Many Thanks again to all who joined us on New Year’s Day and to those who kept us informed of the birds that were being seen.

Here’s wishing you and yours a happy, healthy, and birdy 2011!

Laura H. de la Flor